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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26215150">despite the abundance</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/freshbaguette/pseuds/freshbaguette'>freshbaguette</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Flashbacks, M/M, Music, Past Relationship(s), Post-Episode: s02e13 Mizumono, Slow Dancing, Very Much A Will Graham Character Study</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:15:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,595</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26215150</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/freshbaguette/pseuds/freshbaguette</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>In the yawning expanse of mornings-after Will would often wake up to Hannibal’s gaze on him, soft light filtering through tulle curtains to nestle bright in his eyes. In those moments he was nothing but a man. They did not need to speak of what they were; words would only obfuscate the truth, which was clear only in fleeting moments, like Hannibal’s face limned in dawnlight and Will’s blood-drenched body shuddering on the floor. He never could have had one without the other.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>despite the abundance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title taken from Richard Siken's "Snow and Dirty Rain," in which he describes "a gentleness that comes, / not from the absence of violence, but despite / the abundance of it.”</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When the hospital finally discharged him, it was some sickly late summer, early autumn amalgamation. The heat was thick, fevered, fit every sweating body like a second skin. Something invasive, yet protective. Really, both coexisted at all times; it was clear through his experience with therapists, who were sworn to protect yet never hesitated to jab intrusive, fumbling fingers into his mind. Or to wrap a steadying hand around his trembling jaw as his viscera spilled out of him with a single, invasive swipe of a knife. Will wondered if that, too, was motivated by a twisted desire to protect, to salvage. But what was there left to be saved? Hannibal’s freedom, Will mused. Or perhaps Will’s life, in some foreign way Will could not quite understand the reasoning of but was certain the sentiment could exist in Hannibal’s mind. Hannibal had to forgive him, somehow, and better a knife through the gut, than a body burst at the seams—a murder tableau read as bloody valentine, best organs saved for reverent consumption.</p><p>Will knew the night too well, long hours at the hospital spent staring pointedly away from his bandages and colostomy bag, up at the ceiling, white and popcorn-speckled, a blank canvas for his memory to dance upon. Memories came to him at strange paces, waxing and waning in intensity but never fully receding, and Will learned that even if he tried to doze off or blur his consciousness with painkillers or speak to the unpleasant cycle of FBI interviewers, the images would simply wait patiently in queue to bombard him when his guard dropped low. So he found himself lying awake at odd hours, wracked by deluges of pain, pain, pain, playing again and again in lurid detail. But worst was the thin stream of tenderness that wound through it all: Hannibal’s hands flush against his cheeks and thumbs pressed to his fluttering eyelids; Hannibal moving lithely through the kitchen, hair tossed into his eyes when he craned his neck to ask how spicy Will wanted the stew; Hannibal’s mouth slotted against his own in the wine-soaked hours succeeding dinner.</p><p>So the worst pain of all was to be in love. Or to have been in love. In those dizzying, dreamlike months of recovery, Will found that time took on a syrupy quality, moving languidly in whatever direction it pleased, past and present tense rendered worthless in the face of morphine and intravenous saline solutions and the windowless room. And there were the memories, gorging themselves on the feast of Will’s eidetic vision, images from the past cut and sewn into the film strip reel of the present. What was time? What was to have loved, or to currently be in love. The question that was no longer a question.</p><p>Will was not thinking of questions, or time, as he gingerly drove himself to Wolf Trap, the journey extended by his careful avoidance of potholes that might jolt his tenuously reconstructed insides. He was trying very hard not to think of anything, rather wishing the heat and sound of his surroundings would pass into him like water and fill him to the brim. On the radio they were playing something Classical he did not recognize by name but which recalled deep velvet scenes of Hannibal at the record player, asking if Will preferred the Berlin or London Philharmonic rendition of Mahler’s "Adagietto," to which Will suggested <em>More Songs About Buildings and Food</em> instead, earning him a dour expression. Hannibal, once, in a post-coital haze, finally let Will put his Talking Heads vinyls on, and Will, not expecting Hannibal’s indulgence to last longer than five minutes, set the needle right at “Warning Sign,” his favorite track on the record. <em>Warning sign, warning sign, I hear it but I pay it no mind</em>…  </p><p>At some level he knew he would never outrun his memories; they were as integral to him as his foot working the accelerator and his lungs gulping down humid air and his mouth missing the press of Hannibal’s. Unthinking, he thumbed at his scar, the raised flesh in stark relief even under thick flannel. He reminded himself of his own body, which was now Hannibal’s in a tangible way, though it had been his for a very long time before the physical evidence. What was a body if not a litany of decisions, both exacted by and upon a man. Only in his worst drugged-up delirium was Will able to ignore the knowledge that the scar had ultimately been both his and Hannibal’s decision. <em> I forgive you, Will. Will you forgive me? </em></p><p>If only he had run away with him. If only he really had killed Freddie, which was a thought he had entertained ever since he had seen the smile unabstracting across Hannibal’s face as Will set the meat on the counter. Or if only Hannibal really had left when Will called him. Or if only he and Hannibal had never met at all, and Hobbs had killed Abigail then and there, and Will had resigned himself to a lifetime of teaching. The scar was the product of a sprawling history of decisions they had both made, and kept making, weaving themselves inexorably into each others’ lives until Will earned himself a knife in the gut for his trouble, and Hannibal, a broken heart.</p><p>His sympathy for the devil pained him—the awful knowledge that Hannibal, stern and sadistic in turns, felt the human throb of heartbreak just like anyone else, just like Will. The engine was whirring and the radio was still playing the nameless Classical piece, some kind of march that seemed to be slogging on against its own will. The timpani was commanding an extended ritardano, and in the world beyond the tinny car speakers, time seemed to slow as well. Afternoon sunlight washed the street unbearably white. Will squinted and angled his head low against the blinding glint on the windshield and felt the world stretch out around him, the warp and weft of reality seemingly swelling around just his car. His spit was heavy and congealed behind his cracked lips and he felt the leather of the steering wheel coming off in patches. He could not escape. He could not run. He sat in numb silence as the universe enclosed him in a pocket of remembrance and unwilling love and he recalled the ache of his boiling brain, all those months ago.</p><p>The road had gone unpaved a few miles ago, a blessing in that Will knew he was close to home, and a curse in that every time there was a dip in the road Will had to grit his teeth against the pain in his abdomen. Just as his air conditioning started sputtering and periodically ejecting blasts of hot air, he glimpsed his house on the horizon. He smiled weakly against the queasiness. At the hospital they’d told him his dogs would be returned to his house a few hours prior to his arrival home, as a gift to Will or a mercy to the understaffed shelter they had been staying at, Will wasn’t sure. </p><p>They were a bastion of the relative domesticity of his old life, alongside Abigail’s frequent, rapidly composed texts with little expectation of reply, constantly trying to get him to watch TikToks his phone was too old to play properly, or listen to something called 100 gecs. Or Beverly’s heavy-handed overtures of friendship, Zeller and Price’s incessant banter, Alana’s nearly unbearable sympathy. Or nights with Hannibal on the front porch with a half empty decanter of whiskey between them, the air moist and sweet, music humming softly from inside the house, dogs dozing off at their feet.</p><p>Will drove up the gravel driveway and turned off the car, abruptly silencing the music in the middle of a section ringing with violins. He heard the skittering of paws before he saw his dogs, eager and unashamed in their affection. Despite his body’s protests, he lowered himself to the ground and let himself be slobbered all over, warmth bleeding into his side and legs where they rested against him. The gravel bit into his knees through his jeans and his stomach ached from the rough journey and his lower back was strung through with tension, but he was happy, almost. He let himself have this. </p><p>Beyond was his house, and Will could see the paint on the porch railing peeling away at irregular intervals, and the large oak in front growing threateningly large. With his injuries, he’d have to pay someone to chop off the farthest branches, lest a bad storm throw the tree through his roof. Details like these made it painfully clear how the world was aging around him, and between his months in prison and the hospital, his house began to feel more and more like a place he passed through, rather than lived in. </p><p>He had told Hannibal once of how he’d leave the lights on and walk, ghostlike, across the acres surrounding his house, and feel a warm swell of comfort upon seeing it from afar, like a boat slumbering at sea. Yet the moment the words had left his mouth, they no longer felt like his, purity of feeling transmuted into an offering of vulnerability which Hannibal consumed eagerly. The thought was no longer solely Will’s. It existed in Hannibal, too. It was not dissimilar to the toothbrush Will left by Hannibal’s sink, or his three pairs of khakis folded in Hannibal’s dresser drawer, or his favorite whiskey tucked away behind Hannibal’s copious amounts of wine. Stupidly he wondered if his possessions strewn throughout Hannibal’s house constituted a contamination of the crime scene. Some poor FBI intern was probably tasked with deciphering the meaning of a single red and brown flannel amidst plaid and paisley three-piece suits. </p><p>Hannibal had his things, Will thought wryly, what did Will have to show for their affair? They had spent most of their shared time in Baltimore, with not so much as a stray oven mitt or silk tie left in Will’s house in Wolf Trap. But what need had he for earthly possessions when his memories and scar were torment enough? He reached his front door, personal effects in tow and dogs trotting behind him, then went rigid with surprise: piled beside the door were a couple of familiar leather cases, a shade of deep umber and rich in texture, <em> H.L. </em>monogrammed in gold. And taped to the wall just above, a note scrawled in ballpoint pen:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Will, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He wrote me a letter, telling me to bring this stuff to you. I didn’t want to risk going against what he wanted because I have the sinking feeling that no matter where he is, he’d know if I didn’t do what he asked. I gather that most of it's his, seems a little too opulent for your tastes. But I guess it’s yours now. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> It’s technically evidence, but it’s not like having any of this in person will give us more clues. And anyway, I’m not sure if anything we found in his house will actually help us catch him. You probably know that better than I do. If we did find any clues, it would be because he wanted us to find him.  </em>
</p><p><em> He might very well be giving this to you because he wants </em> you <em> to find him. If that’s the case I don’t know what to say, except </em> don’t do anything spectacularly stupid <em> . You’re still recovering from him. We all are, in a way.  </em></p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Take care, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Z </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Will blinked, unseeing, at the letter for what seemed like an eternity, but was in reality perhaps half a minute. Then he read it over and over. The words began to swim off the page and impress themselves on his mind; he cursed himself for not being careful for what he wished for. He kicked the base of the large box away to step inside, and then busied himself by fixing water and food for the dogs. His own dinner was cheap and fast to prepare—there was nicer food in the pantry, but Will wanted to spend as little time cooking as possible, haunted by the memory of Hannibal cooking, forearms exposed and covered with a faint sheen of sweat. He moved to the living room quickly, stoked the fireplace to a gentle humming warmth, settled on the rug by his resting pets, and opened his phone.</p><p>He was already scrolling through his old texts with Abigail before he realized to do so in order to take his mind off Hannibal’s things on the porch would very likely become an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” situation. Will knew all too well the superposition of past and present; he could think of Abigail for maybe thirty seconds before her throat split and gushed blood. He had reached many a time for the virgin teacup and instead cut himself on the shattered porcelain lurking just beneath the memory, the bitter bite of reality waiting in the shadows. In every iteration of this scene he would try to save her, shaking hands around her neck, because to save her was to also shift reality and thus to save himself. He tore his fingers raw on shards of porcelain. She cried out in fits and starts, until she didn’t. </p><p>And yet Will still cherished the memories of their best conversations—Abigail sending him incomprehensible videos at two a.m. with an all-caps smattering of keystrokes as the caption, Will smiling softly to himself in his bed, face illumined by the blue light of his phone. It’d been a welcome distraction from the dry grip of insomnia. He used to turn on all the lights and change the sweaty sheets and pretend that it was a normal hour, that he was a normal father talking to his normal daughter. So he pressed upon, eventually stumbling upon a playlist Abigail had sent him after their first dinner together, with Hannibal and Freddie, where he’d responded:</p><p> </p><p>What the hell</p><p>Did you make one of thes fr Hannibal too</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> no </em>
</p><p>
  <em> he wouldnt like it </em>
</p><p>
  <em> after you left i tried to get him to listen to taylor swifts new album but he looked like he was morally appalled by the idea of listenign to music through a streaming service </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Yeah, I think he listens exclusively to vinyl .</p><p>And nothing composed before the 1940's</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> instead of folklore he made me listen to chopin nocturnes </em>
</p><p>
  <em> which were actually kind of cool but like </em>
</p><p>
  <em> idk itd be nice if he at least tried the stuff we like uknow </em>
</p><p>
  <em> are you listening to my playlist </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Yeah</p><p>It's good. I know  a lot of these artists</p><p>What’s with the classical</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> when i told him i was making u a playlist he insisted on it </em>
</p><p>
  <em> but i tried to integrate it into the energy of the rest of the songs, like the ravel has a lot of plucking which transitions to the fingerstyle guitar in going to california </em>
</p><p>
  <em> i also put some stuff i listen to </em>
</p><p>
  <em> let me know if you like the phoebe bridgers song </em>
</p><p> </p><p>He’d never replied. Evidently, Will was not very good at texting. He sort of thought the only reason she didn’t make fun of his copious typos and slow typing speed was because she was too busy laughing at how Hannibal texted: with perfect grammar and syntax, each individual message signed with “Dr. Hannibal Lecter.” </p><p>Her playlist had been good. It somehow represented all three of their music tastes, opening and closing with classical music, Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers spliced between successions of the Led Zeppelin and Bon Jovi she knew he liked. He opened it and let it play. It pained him in a way he never knew extended guitar solos and relentless four-four drum lines could: the auditory image of their three lives, intertwined. <em> A place was made for Abigail in your world… A place was made for all of us, together. </em> It was, if only in the music, this vehicle for fantasy and memory.</p><p>When it ended he was still picking at his cold dinner, face half buried in the couch cushions, Winston curled tight against his stomach. When he reached their messages from the weeks preceding his imprisonment, he heard a low whine and realized he was gripping Winston’s flank with much more force than necessary; he shut off his phone and smoothed back and forth over his fur in apology. Their messages from that period were even more painful to read than they had been to type. Will’s texts were largely incoherent, words either autocorrected to different ones or so incomprehensible his phone had left them as is, u’s in place of i’s and f’s in place of g’s. He had just gotten to a section where he’d sent her about fourteen successive texts, all misspellings of her name and blurry pictures of some leafless forest, at six in the morning going by the timestamp. Abigail had stopped texting him a couple days prior.</p><p>Will rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes as the night fell around him and the fire seemed to burn dagger-bright in comparison. His food was only half finished but he did not want to eat. A lifetime ago, a man with a sleepworn voice and a maroon sweater might’ve coaxed him into having<em> another bite, Will, or if you cannot stomach the meal, I’d be more than happy to fix you something else </em> and not for the first time he almost longed for the brain-fried days of his encephalitis; at least then he’d have an explanation for the voice in his head that was not his own but was more familiar than his own. </p><p>He wondered what conclusion the rhetorical intern tasked with analyzing Will’s possessions had come to. They hadn’t told anyone of their affair, both for its unprofessional dimension and because neither of them knew nor tried to know exactly what their relationship <em> was</em>, if it could even be called a relationship. They did not speak of it to each other, much less to others. In the yawning expanse of mornings-after Will would often wake up to Hannibal’s gaze on him, soft light filtering through tulle curtains to nestle bright in his eyes. In those moments he was nothing but a man. They did not need to speak of what they were; words would only obfuscate the truth, which was clear only in fleeting moments, like Hannibal’s face limned in dawnlight and Will’s blood-drenched body shuddering on the floor. He never could have had one without the other.</p><p>Everything, everything seemed to fall back gravitationally to Hannibal. Will knew exactly what was in the leather cases, and for a moment he entertained simply selling the contents. They were probably in immaculate condition, despite their age, and Hannibal never bought less than the highest quality of anything, so Will wagered they’d fetch a pretty penny. It would offend him, too, his carefully curated collection thrown to the winds, falling into the possession of the tasteless nouveau riche who would use them to impress equally blind guests and never for pure pleasure. But the boxes weren’t going anywhere. He lurched to his feet, unsteady as if drunk. Their presence clawed at the back of his mind, like nails raked against his skull to the tune of a siren’s song. Will went out to the porch to fetch them after washing up, and inside, beside the fire, he hesitantly flicked open their gold latches. </p><p>He marvelled at Hannibal’s record player and record collection, the latter stored in a heavy cube of dark wood cradled in leather, because obviously Hannibal would never deign to keep his records in a milk crate. The turntable was an achingly beautiful machine, with a glass cover that eased open at the barest touch, body made of sturdy, warm rosewood with a lacquer that shone as if it had just dried yesterday, despite the small nicks at the feet which betrayed decades of use. Beneath the bite of lab formaldehyde and dust, Will smelled the distinct notes of Hannibal’s home, a fragrance he could not describe as well as Hannibal himself might, but which made him dizzy with nostalgia. Something floral, spiced, tinged with the distinct weight of dead things—Hannibal a man with a penchant for skulls and antlers, withering herbs and aging wood.</p><p>The records were all of music like the piece he’d heard on the radio that afternoon. Hannibal loved his opera, symphony, aria, sonata. The box held selections from Mozart’s <em> Magic Flute</em>, of course, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky piano concertos, the "Flower Duet" from Léo Delibes’ Lakmé, all foreign titles and somber-faced instrumentalists on the record sleeves. He glimpsed Mahler’s "Adagietto," the piece he had shunned all those months before in favor of his Talking Heads, and felt a pang of regret. </p><p>Strange, that after all they had done to each other, Will could still feel such remorse—even for something as quotidian as a lovers’ quarrel, recalled while sitting on the carpet thumbing through his ex’s record collection. So much of their fraught and bloody history could not be undone. Save for this, perhaps, if listening to the piece now could act as compensation for rejecting it earlier. He took the record out of the sleeve.</p><p>It was not the "Adagietto," at all. Shock coursed through his veins as he beheld the disc—not black but a vivid royal blue with an ochre center—Joni Mitchell’s <em> Blue</em>. Will’s copy of it. He had left it at Hannibal’s house the night preceding The Night, and while lying blind with pain in the hospital, had resigned himself to never seeing it again. Yet here it was, gorgeous in his hands. It was the nicest record he owned, almost glowing with color, the body translucent so that the light emanating from the fireplace shone through it and cast an indigo halo across his lap. For a half second Will sat frozen before the ephemeral dance of oranges and blues, body caught between parabolas of light and shadow, and above all, struck mute by the notion that Hannibal would displace something he loved with something Will loved, even if as a cryptic message obviously laced with hidden intent.</p><p>It was in that strange half-reality that he felt himself rise to put the record on. The memory of the first and last time they had listened to it together breached the surface of his mind; the strongest vision he’d had all day rose up before him like an old movie. He closed his eyes and heard himself say, </p><p>“Here. I brought something from home.”</p><p>Hannibal took the album from him, reached carefully inside to pull out the thin paper sleeve holding the record, and then the record itself. His lips pursed almost imperceptibly when he saw the smattering of smudges.</p><p>“It was my mom’s—I think she got it second-hand. It skips in some places, but nothing major.” Will took the record gingerly from Hannibal and set it on the turntable, moved the arm to the first track.</p><p>“I didn’t listen to a lot of folk when I was younger—more loud, hard rock, lots of indulgent guitar solos.” Will smiled crookedly. “I used to listen to Television’s ‘Marquee Moon’ for hours on end. When you’re sixteen and tired and angry, a five minute guitar solo feels like—salvation, or the answer to everything in the world—and for those five golden minutes, nothing else matters.”</p><p>Hannibal studied him, head cocked to the side and on the verge of saying something. Will saw him open his mouth, then swallow the thought. They sat in comfortable silence as the record spun, fireplace crackling and popping and wine blurring everything pleasantly, until the final track petered out into static. </p><p>Hannibal moved to speak again. “Dance with me, Will.” </p><p>“What?”</p><p>Hannibal reached out and Will grasped his hand without thinking. He let Hannibal pull him to his feet, watched as Hannibal set the needle back to the penultimate track. “That was my mom’s favorite song, too. Or so my dad said,” Will noted. “‘A Case of You.’”</p><p>“It will suit our purposes, for the moment.”</p><p>“Our purposes? Or your purposes, that you’re prepared to convince me are mine?”</p><p>“Yes,” Hannibal said in non-answer, and Will caught a flash of a smile before he slid too close to see clearly, head tucked on Will’s shoulder and free hand snaked tight around his waist. Will’s eyes fluttered shut, let the warm line of Hannibal’s body press against him and the sound wash over him, just as tangible as Hannibal’s fringe tickling his temple and Hannibal’s breath thick against his ear. <em> Oh, you are in my blood like holy wine, you taste so bitter, and so sweet…   </em></p><p>“Hannibal.” Barely a whisper.</p><p>“Will.” </p><p>They gently rocked in time to Joni Mitchell’s crooning. Will untangled their fingers to drape both his arms around Hannibal’s neck and draw himself in tighter. He lay his head down on Hannibal’s shoulder, face angled away from Hannibal’s. “What appeals to you about Classical music?”</p><p>Hannibal rubbed Will’s back, slowly. “Do you remember what I said about the <em> imago</em>, earlier at dinner?”</p><p>“An ideal, alive only in our subconscious.”</p><p>“Though not of a person, much Classical music feels like a manifestation of a mental ideal. Especially the Baroque—nowhere in contemporary music have I heard the purity of form and harmony found in, say, Bach’s Cello Suites.”</p><p>“It’s music you can understand.”</p><p>“And thus appreciate more intensely.”</p><p>Will craned his neck up to press his cheek against Hannibal’s, gently, gently, still not looking him in the eyes. “Does that go for everything? Do you have to understand a person fully to love them?”</p><p>“I believe I said ‘appreciate,’ not ‘love.’”</p><p>“I know. And I asked you about love.”</p><p>Will felt him shift back, and suddenly Hannibal caught his eyes, pressed their faces forehead to forehead. With the newfound distance between them, Will dropped his arms from Hannibal’s shoulders to his arms, which still rested fairy-light on Will’s waist. Will thumbed the raised scar lines down Hannibal’s forearms. </p><p>“No,” Hannibal said, finally, lips brushing against Will’s. “For here I am. With you.”</p><p>“You would love me,” Will whispered, wonderingly, pressed a chaste kiss to Hannibal’s mouth with eyes half-open. “You would ask me to run—even if you thought—you couldn’t fully predict me.” Will punctuated each pause with a kiss.</p><p>“Yes.” Hannibal pulled an arm up, drew the back of his fingers in a straight line across Will’s abdomen, then again in the opposite direction, then again. Will had dismissed the motion then; it stuck out bright and hot in his memory now. “Do you fully understand me?”</p><p>Will laughed, off-color and too loud. “No. I see parts of you, rooms in your memory palace I don’t think you’ve shown to anyone else. But not all of you.”</p><p>“But are you in love with me?”</p><p>“I don’t know any other way to be.”</p><p>For a single amber-frozen moment they were a normal couple, letting their slow dance linger long after the record had ended, soft skips of the needle dissolving into the rustle of the fireplace and the rush of nighttime wind against the windows. Will shut his eyes and tilted his head back. Hannibal set his thumbs into the hollows of his hip bones and pressed a warm, open-mouthed kiss to the skin on his bared neck. Hannibal’s body, mouth, hands, moving tenderly. Where else had they been, what blood had they tasted, what life had they ended. Will breathed and let the cannibal lap at his sweat and draw his teeth across his pulse.</p><p>Will did not want them to be a normal couple. He curled his hands around Hannibal’s triceps and pulled him closer, dragged them back into an embrace. With this realization, the night took on a sharper, sweeter, slightly acerbic quality, not unlike Hannibal’s best wine. Somewhere in the back of Will’s mind, Joni Mitchell was still singing… <em> go to him, stay with him if you can, but be prepared to bleed…  </em></p><p>He was prepared to bleed. They had met in the midst of a bloodbath, sealed every overture of affection with blood. He loved Hannibal with teeth and claws and his whole heart beating sharp and caustic in his ribs. He did not know any other way to be.</p><p>The air was stirring, and mosquitoes began to sing. Will opened his eyes and he was on his porch, seated upon a chair piled high with thick knit blankets. He was facing up towards the stars and, recalling vague memories of nautical star charts, made out Orion above the horizon, and, near it, Jupiter. <em> Blue </em>was still playing, muffled from inside the house. He wondered if Hannibal’s stars were the same, or if he was hearing the same music as Will—if their last tender night together was lodged deep in the catacombs of his memory palace.</p><p>He was clutching the sleeve the record had come in with a shaking hand. When he moved to stand, something fell out, a flash of cream and gold. With shaking hands he picked it up—an envelope—unaddressed, unsigned, unsealed. When he opened it, he skimmed his fingers gently across the familiar handwriting carved like intaglio into the page:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> My dearest, Will, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> How was your recovery? I regret I was not present to oversee the process personally, and I pray your wound has scarred over well. Violence and healing are two faces of the same delicate, beautiful process. Thus, for beauty’s sake, one should always keep a ledger of the times one has been hurt and has healed—yet what you do with said ledger, of course, is up to you. We are neither of us gods, but I like to believe we wield the power to absolve one another of our respective wrongdoings.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I will not ask if you have forgiven me. Rather, how often do you think of me? Is it as often as I think of you—at mealtimes, in museums, strolling through the streets on days thick with rain, upon seeing beautiful creations, upon witnessing horrendous pain? How often do you picture me in my new home? I won’t condescend to you by pretending you do not know where I am.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Though you have not sought me out yet, it is touching that you would seek out a piece I love so dearly. I hope you weren’t terribly disappointed upon discovering its absence. There are excellent recordings online, though I sincerely doubt the quality of the digital audio approaches that of the analog. Perhaps one day we will even be able to attend a live rendition. There is a life for us here, dear Will. And if when you arrive, it is not a life you are pleased with, I would not hesitate to build us new ones until you are satisfied.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> A new day is dawning. Wounds have been healed, are healing, and will continue to heal. The architecture of our future is amorphous and hazy in many respects, but the broad forms of it are distinct: I envision a palace that cannot stand unless buttressed on either side by both of our efforts. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> In the end, after truth and falsehood and beyond morality and immorality, there is only desire. Have you stopped denying yourself? </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Yours, always, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Hannibal </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Somewhere deep in the quiet of the stream stood a man. He was young—younger, at least—face clean-shaven, eyes bright. The sweat on his forehead mingled with motor oil as he dragged his fingers through his rough, dark curls to shove them away from his face. The boatyard air was dense and acrid, smelling of unwashed bodies.  </p><p>The sunlight was bright and garish; red sunburned skin spanned the back of his neck; the calluses on his hands had cracked and burst. He had been here since before dawn: if he was going to study at GWU, he’d have to pay his way through somehow. And he knew how to work with his hands. He reaped what he was due by raising machinery from the grave. The water was bright and cool when he dunked his head under.</p><p>When he breached the surface again, the liquid that dripped down his face in rivulets was not water, but blood. It slid through his newly etched wrinkles and collected in his patchy beard. He shuddered and clutched at his stomach when he drew breath.</p><p>His younger self had thought he had seen the worst the world had to offer, and thus had convinced himself he could deny it, could cope with how it poured into him like sludge and filled him with a wealth of darkness. But now he loomed over the water and saw himself for who he truly was. There was only so much he could deny. Some morning between then and now he had woken up with blood in his mouth and relished the taste as he swallowed.</p><p>Staring at his reflection in the water, he grinned, feral, mouth splitting his face into pieces like a shattered record. <em> In the end, after truth and falsehood and beyond morality and immorality…  </em></p><p>The constellations of scars etched on his skin stretched and compressed as he rose to his feet, and his hands no longer shook; they were perfectly still as he returned to fixing the boat motor. He’d have to nurse it back to near perfect health for the long and perilous—yet inevitable—journey across the Atlantic.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>love to C for beta'ing &lt;3</p><p><a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2fKV6Wk4Ww2z2FdWYZjEVS?si=vjEBO3d5Se-GSnGhk3J5Dw">here</a> is Abigail's playlist for Will and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3c9l9FTINT4MEC5bY6vEkz?si=R3Gapt8zQ0a12pSHLjitWw">here</a> is a playlist of all the music that was mentioned that's not in her playlist. if you don't have Spotify I'm sorry... here's Joni Mitchell's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o">"A Case of You"</a> on YouTube which is the most gratuitously referenced song by far.</p><p>the Classical piece playing on the radio can be anything you want it to be but I was imagining the Allegro from Shostakovich 5, which is what I put in the second playlist. I did take some artistic liberties though because the opening is actually one long accelerando and not a rit but the section "ringing with violins" is at like 4:20 and it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. (if you're listening to the playlist, right after that we have stupid horse by 100 gecs which I think is an excellent progression.)</p><p>as always kudos and comments are super welcome!! let me know your Hannibal music headcanons :))</p></blockquote></div></div>
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